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Getaway: Failed Remake of Popular Action Thriller

Published On:
17/11/2013

In 1972, Steve McQueen and Ali MacGraw joined forces in action thriller, The Getaway; a partnership that has been described as one of the best on-screen matchups in film history. In 1994 came the remake, starring Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger, in a somewhat successful remake of the action-packed masterpiece.

This year, Getaway has received another do-over under the direction of Courtney Solomon,and the results are less than desirable.

Brent Magna (Hawke) is a former professional race car driver who, having dabbled in a few illegalities and unlawful trades in his time, has given up his racing days for good. Hoping for a fresh start, he and his wife Leanne (Budiga) move to Sofia, Bulgaria, in search of a more quaint and quiet life. However, their peaceful existence is soon disrupted when he returns home one night before Christmas, only to find his house vandalised and his wife gone.

He soon receives a mysterious phone call from a man (Voight) who informs him that if he ever wants to see his wife again, he must follow his instructions very carefully. Under the watchful eye of 'the Voice', Brent steals a Shelby Cobra from a nearby parking garage before a police chase ensues, leaving Brent with no means to escape.

Soon, Brent accidentally picks up a tech-savvy and a foul-mouthed girl, The Kid (Gomez), and with the clock ticking, they need to figure out what it is that he needs to do if he ever wants to see his wife alive again.

With a number of outstanding turns under his belt, including 2013's Before Midnight, it's a little disheartening to see Hawke playing a part that has little character development, nor a story that he can actually connect with. Admittedly, he handles the impressive driving stunts with ease, but that's as far as his barely invested efforts go. Gomes is just as ineffective and with her very limited dramatic acting experience, the casting choice is rather questionable. Alongside this, Voight's role as 'the Voice' is hampered by a dubious Bulgarian accent, which is as jarring as it is utterly silly.

Essentially,Getaway has managed to forgo everything that makes up an engaging piece of entertainment; plot, character likeability and a believable storyline, to name a few. Instead, it delivers a pointless and seemingly mundane and messily put-together film that ultimately has nothing to say. Even what impressive action scenes there are quickly become repetitive.

Overall, Getaway is a prime example of the dangers of remakes; directionless and decidedly unambitious, it's really just one long car-chase which, at the end of the day, has no destination.

What can you say about the seemingly unstoppable force that is Nicolas Cage that hasn’t been said before? A magnet for the most troubled, muddled and just generally exasperating films to hit cinemas in the last five years, his latest work in USS Indianapolis: Men of Courage does nothing to change his fortunes.

Despite being based on one a true story that has all the makings of a war epic, the Mario Van Peebles-directed USS Indianapolis bleeds all and any gravitas and emotion out of its incredibly dramatic source material.

The story goes as thus: the eponymous US Navy cruiser delivered the first parts of the atomic bomb that would go on to devastate Hiroshima, before being torpedoed by the Japanese navy, leaving some 300 of the 1000-plus crewmen dead and the rest stranded in shark-infested waters. Said sharks, along with dehydration and salt water poisoning, leave just over 300 survivors to be rescued.

At the centre of the ensuing hubbub is Cage’s Captain McVay, who many, very unreasonably, blame for the death of the 700 or so victims – so you see, it’s a very complex story, but one that very quickly descend into and exercise on how not to make a war film.

The occasional laughable CGI aside, Cage is oddly sedate, bordering on placid, in his role – yes, the central character is possibly the flattest element of the film, while seasoned actors, Tom Sizemore and Thomas Jane, are given little to chew on in their respective roles.

While starting exactly as one would expect a war film to, the wreckage part of the film turns into cheap disaster movie, before turning into a courtroom drama in the final act. It’s a muddle of a film that fails to really drum to the beat of McVay’s potentially brilliant arc as a firm commander that eventually buckles under the unjust pressure he receives back at home.

Bad CGI, a mammoth two hour-plus running time and Nic Cage can be forgiven, but what’s at the heart of this film’s mess is the script. Jumping from event to event, plotline to plotline, at a whim, with Cage’s soft murmured speech used to pave over the transitions, USS Indianapolis’s pacing is that of a film hurrying to stuff as many ideas and threads as possible – expect that’s not the case. Van Peebles tries so hard to build the layers of an epic, when, actually, all he needed to do was tell this simple but stirring story as it is.

As an exploration of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in the military, Dito Montiel’s Man Down is a muddled story that’s pretty challenging to sit through. Though on paper there’s plenty of potential depth in this particular effect of war – and a solid cast at its disposable – the film descends into military-movie clichés, while not really keeping up with its complex set-up.

The movie to take place over four separate time periods and opens with U.S Marine Gabriel Drummer (LeBeouf) and his military buddy, Devin Roberts (Courtney), making their way through a vast and seemingly wasted American landscape which appears to have been destroyed by a chemical attack. On the look-out for survivors, the pair is hoping to find Drummer’s son, Jonathan (Shotwell), whom he believes has been kidnapped.

Before the audience gets a chance to find out what is really going in, the story flashes back to another time period where a seemingly distraught Drummer is being interviewed by Counselor Peyton (Oldman) about an ‘incident’ that occurred on the battlefield in Afghanistan. Moving on to yet to another period, we also get to see the story of Drummer and Roberts during their Marine Corps training at Camp Lejeune before, eventually, cutting to the story of Drummer’s life at home with wife, Natalie (Mara) and their son.

Taking on several narrative threads without really knowing where to take them, let alone how to put them back together, is one of Man Down’s major issues. Used to give some kind of visual interpretation of PTSD, the movie’s choppy editing is ineffective and comes across as a messy, superficial tool.

Clocking in at precisely ninety minutes, Man Down is a relatively short film but, thanks to the overworked script and slow pace, it takes forever for any of the stories to build into something bigger.

Working its way through a series of military clichés, the story works best when it is focused on digging into Drummer’s fractured mind, with the conversation between him and his counsellor – played by the seemingly wasted talent of one Gary Oldman – serving to be one of the movie’s best elements. LeBeouf is convincing as a troubled soldier desperately trying not to sink deeper into madness and his commitment to the role is commendable, making it all that more frustrating to see that the script itself is so lacking.